Sometimes one can improve the theories in the sense of discovering a quicker, more efficient way of doing a given calculation.
--
describing his discoveries in Density functional theory, December 29, 1995, in an interview with István Hargittai, Magdolna Hargittai (2000). Candid science: conversations with famous chemists, Volume 1 of Candid science. Imperial College Press. p. 180. ISBN 1860942288.John Pople
One reason you tend to doubt conspiracy theories when you've worked in government is because you know government is not nearly competent enough to carry off elaborate theories. It's a banal explanation, but imagine how efficient it would need to be.
Philip D. Zelikow
We never had any use for Taylor nor any of the efficiency or scientific management crowd. They never realized that human toil was the last thing in the world you had to be efficient about; the only way to be really efficient is to eliminate it entirely, and this would have been heresy to any of the Taylor, Gant, Barth, Cook efficiency crowd. It is sad to contemplate that men of the technical ability of the names mentioned in this paragraph were so lame in their thinking and social outlook that they missed the boat so completely. Who in hell wants to be efficient with a shovel, and what sense would there be even if you succeeded? They should have had their heads opened with a shovel, it might have been more effective.
Howard Scott
Theory is a dirty word in some managerial quarters. That is rather curious, because all of us, managers especially, can no more get along without theories than libraries can get along without catalogs — and for the same reason: theories help us make sense of incoming information.
Henry Mintzberg
Once efficiency is universally accepted as a rule, it becomes an inner compulsion and weighs like a sense of sin, simply because no one can ever be efficient enough, just as no one can ever be virtuous enough. And this new sense of sin only contributes further to the enervation of leisure, for the rich as well as the poor.
Clement Greenberg
Our best theories are not only truer than common sense, they make more sense than common sense...
David Deutsch
Pople, John
Popova, Lyubov
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